Meeting #395 Bound to be

Expect the unexpected, 
Hope in the darkest of times. 
For if your faith is restricted, 
Then you living, is a crime. 

Come what may,
Have no fright.
For if you pray,
He will show you the light.

And so it goes,
Somethings are bound to be.
Just let it flow,
And you shall receive serendipity.

It was a vague but heartwarming theme and today we had with us a new member taking up her very first role as the Sergeant-At-Arms. Crystal Chen, was bold enough to take up this role and striking the gavel once, called the meeting to order on time. After introducing the house rules and leading us through the Toastmaster’s Promise she passed the floor to the Acting President, Chitirra, to give the welcome address. 

Grammarian, Srikant, enlightened everyone with the word of the day which was “serendipity”. It means the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way or simply good fortune or luck. Something you’re quite likely to find here at Toastmasters. Srikant was articulate and professional. 

Each member and guest of the floor shared their thoughts about what ‘Bound to Be’ meant to them and were very comfortable in using the word of the day as they spoke. 

To shift the ambience of the meeting into one that was bound to be inspiring, Toastmaster Shain Anand shared a fabulous Japanese tale in his invocation speech on how what’s bound to be is merely a destiny that is not a matter of chance but a matter of choice. You need no ‘Liquid Luck’ to succeed in life. You create your own serendipity. 

The meeting proper thus begin when the ever ready Toastmaster of the Evening, E K Yeo, CC, CL too control of the floor. He brought us through the history of Toastmasters, where a single meeting that began in the basement of a church in Santa Ana, California was bound to be global. 

Following, the respective role players introduced the purpose of their roles. Shain Anand played dual roles today by also being the Ah-Counter. Srikant and Shelly Sim respectively were the Grammarian and Timer for the first time.  

We were blessed today to have with us a very humble individual as our General Evaluator and she was none other than Nurhayati Hassan, ACB, ALB. 

Alas the battle of being impromptu begin as the Table Topics® session was led by Manish Jha, CC. His questions were short and simple and members and guests stood up to the challenge vivaciously despite not knowing what they were bound to get. 

Table Topics Participants:

1) Yap Ooi Yee
2) KT
3) Kelvin Chong ACB
4) Crystal Chen
5) Jia Ming

We then transitioned smoothly into the Assigned Speech Session and we had with us tonight 3 speakers ready to serve a feast. The first speaker was C P Lau, attempting the Specialty Speeches Series from the Advanced Communication Manual. His purpose was to uplift the spirit of the audience with his title ‘To Repeat to Progress’. Indeed he reiterated in his unique style that practice makes perfect. 

The second speaker was Olivia with her very first speech under Pathways and in MMKL. Under her pathway of Presentation Mastery, she delivered her ice breaker entitled “Olivia from KL to KL”. 

We learnt her inside out and indeed she’s bound to be a great speaker. 

The final speaker was Chitirra who delivering her Pathways: Project 2 for the second time in an attempt to meet the requirements of the improvements from the evaluation that was given to her during her first speech. There was indeed vast improvement but there was also an equally sized room for it in her speech ‘Thanatophobia’. 

Three’s a charm and once the three speeches were completed, a charming new Toastmaster, Crystal, was inducted into the club by the VPM, Yap Ooi Yee. There was jubilation in the air as she raised her hand into it to give Hi-5s to each member of the club. Welcome aboard the Money-Mastery KL TMC family dear Crystal and may you sparkle as your name sounds, in this Toastmaster journey of yours. 

A brief break was given and we proceeded for the bigger breakfast afterward which was the Evaluation and Reports Session. The panel of evaluators for both, the Table Topics® and the Assigned Speeches gave their best and honest opinions to the respective speakers. Members from the floor too gave their views to the speakers during the Open Evaluation Session. Well, that’s what friends are for isn’t it?  

The string of reports were then shared respectively by the Ah-Counter, Grammarian and finally Timer. 

Panel of Evaluators: (Speakers evaluated are in the brackets)

1. Ron Yeap, ACB, CL (C P Lau, ACB, ALB)
2. Ben Hoe, CTM, CL (Olivia Chen)
3. C P Lau, ACB, ALB (Chitirra)

All things are bound to come to an end, and so as the meeting drew closer to its end, the awards were given to the winners who deserved it for they earned it not through sweet serendipity but instead solid hard work. 

Winners for The Night:

Best Table Topics® : Jia Ming
Best Evaluation: Ron Yeap, ACB, CL
Best Speaker: C P Lau, ACB, ALB

The Acting President, Chitirra took stage once again to recognize the club’s effort in achieving President’s Distinguished Club status for the 1st Term of 2016/2017 and Immediate Past President, Ron Yeap, ACB, CL received the award in front of the members of the club once again as he had originally received in the ‘Hall Of Fame’ ceremony held on the 12th of Nov 2017 by District 102. 

After a small token was given to the GE, announcements were made and the closing address was delivered, the gavel was hit once again leaving everyone curious as to what was bound to be in the next meeting. A group photo was taken and the November babies of the club were celebrated with our routine cake cutting session. 

Indeed it was a blessed meeting. Changes came along the way but every member helped to embrace it vigour for sometimes what is bound to be is merely the outcome of our actions. Nevertheless, forget not the quote by Aristotle that if something's bound to happen, it will happen. Right time, right person, and for the best reason. With that, I wish you the best serendipities in life. Until next time, goodbye!

November Babies

 Blog Writer: Chitirra

Meeting #394 Halloween: Trick or Treat

If you really want to enjoy this blog, then wear your Halloween costume once again, to join this voyage through Money Mastery KL's 394th meeting. On the 31st of October 2017, we turned to page 394 of Money Mastery KL's meeting book. The page unleashed the Halloween Genie. The Genie had both tricks and treats under its sleeves. Voila. The Genie granted the meeting with a spooky ambience. Members arrived in Halloween costumes of all sorts, ranging from Wednesday Addams to the so called Toilet Paper ghost.

The Assistant Sergeant At Arms for the evening Olivia Chow, who was taking up the role for the first time, called the meeting to order followed by reciting the Toastmaster's promise.

Madam President Wendy Sim, CC, in her pumpkin orange coloured attire, welcomed everyone present there and invited the Grammarian Manish Jha, CC, with the Ghost Rider mask, to introduce the word "Aghast" which means amazement or horror. The entire club was aghast when they saw Manish in his mask. Afterwards, the control was passed over to the Snake Oil Salesman a.k.a Toastmaster of the Evening Ron Yeap, ACB ALB. With his big Moustache and the top hat, he took over the charge. Not only he nailed the attire, Ron maintained a bulky voice throughout the meeting giving a uncanny aura to the meeting as a whole

As it was a speech marathon, no Table Topics® Session was conducted. The Snake Oil Salesman spilt the snake oil on the audience and we were teleported to the Assigned speech session. We can see 6 speakers souls, waiting for their turn to  let go their fear of public speaking.

1. The first among them was Joel Silas who can be called as the Toilet Phantom because he made himself a phantom out of the toilet paper. Quite innovative. He was delivering his 8th speech from the CC manual with the speech titled "Wanderlust". The speech was about his tour to Europe which he presented with the help of photos. As usual, Joel's humorous conversational style made the speech entertaining.

2. Second soul was Ken Chan DTM who was doing the Ice Breaker speech for the 9th time with the title "Ken, He Can". Only one word about his speech: awe-inspiring.

3. Time for our third soul, CP Lau, ACB, ALB. He was delivering the speech from the Advanced Communication - Speciality Speeches Series Manual.His evaluator was given the option to select his speech title from a list of 5 speech titles.  His speech title was "Progress is More Important Than Perfection". Cool as you like, the maestro delivered the speech with perfection.

4. After those seasoned speakers, it was the turn of one of the newest souls of Money Mastery KL, Shelly Sim going to kick-start her Toastmasters journey. "Who is Shelly?" Those were the words reverberating among us when she came to the dais. She took us on a short trip about her life. Even though it was her first speech she delivered it like a pro with less fear and full of confidence. At the end of her speech, we were able to say She is Shelly. She was also given a standing ovation for delivering her first speech.

5. Have you ever heard of the word Thanatophobia? Well, we also didn't know about the word until our fifth soul Chitirra started her speech. Ooh la la! Her speech had the closest resemblance with the theme of the day. She was doing her Pathways Level 1 Project 2 speech titled "Thanatophobia". Her unhurried style of speech delivery gave the meeting a frightening.

6. Last but not the least, Srikant was the final soul who delivered his Pathways Level 1 Project 2 speech titled "Adventures in Cambodia". He shared about his experiences in Cambodia which was no less than an adventure filled with excitement and amazement for him.

Abracadabra. That was the perfect speech session for a Halloween night. The credit goes to those 6 souls who challenged themselves on the Halloween night. We voted for the Best Speaker. It was time for a short break. But this time, the magic was on the refreshments. We had the refreshments which were based on the Halloween theme, thanks to Madam President Wendy. Thank God, we didn't need the Halloween Genie for that. Else the Genie would have been annoyed by our requests.

After the break session, General Evaluator Ching Lee Hwa, ACB, ALB was handed over the stage to walk us through the Evaluation session. She invited the Speech Evaluators to give their evaluation. Each evaluator gave their best evaluation for their respective speakers. After each evaluation, the GE gave her personal evaluation to the speakers which was indeed a bonus lesson for the speakers.

The panel of evaluators are as follows with speaker's name inside brackets:-

1.    Serena Kong, ACB (Joel Silas)

2.    E K Yeo, CC, CL (Ken Chan, DTM)

3.    Kang Fong Luan, CC (C P Lau, ACB, ALB)

4.    Ken Chan, DTM (Shelly Sim)

5.    C P Lau, ACB, ALB (Chitirra)

6.    Ng Yee Chia, ACB (Srikant Marakani)

Finally, it was the time to recognize our best performers:

Best Speaker    : CP Lau ACB, ALB

Best Evaluator  : Ken Chan DTM

Arthur Conan Doyle quoted - "Where there is no imagination, there is no horror". Well, MMKL definitely has that power of imagination and The Halloween Genie was  the result of that imagination. The credit goes to the entire club for making every meeting entertaining and meaningful. At the end, MMKL turned the 394th page and the Halloween Genie went back with the hope that exactly one year later MMKL will re-open the page.

May the force of Halloween Genie will always be with Money Mastery KL. 

Role players for the meeting:

1. Olivia Chow (ASAA)

2. Ron Yeap ACB, CL (TME)

3. Shain Anand (Ah-Counter) 

4. Manish Jha CC (Grammarian)

5. Mandy Chan (Timer)

6. Ching Lee Hwa ACB, ALB (General Evaluator)

Blog writer: Shain Anand

Meeting #393 Deepavali: Light It Up

Light it up! Light it up! In conjunction with the Diwali celebration, our meeting was in jubilation. Our 393^rd meeting had made a few records. We had most of the members in their Indian costumes attending the meeting and we had the most number of guests visiting our club. Thank you to each and every member’s effort in bringing our club to a reputable mark. We had a record of 31 members and guests attending the meeting!

The scene looked busy and joyful during the fellowship session. Members and guests had some good chats while enjoying our signature nasi lemak; while some of us were getting the venue ready for the meeting

The meeting was kick started by our Sergeant At Arms, Shain Anand, who led us in reciting the Toastmasters Promises. As many may see this as a routine, it serves as a constant reminder to our members.

Our Madam President, Competent Communicator Wendy Sim, with her beautiful smile and shining saree costume, officiated the meeting. She gave her opening speech to light up the meeting, with our theme of the day: Deepavali: Light It Up! Wendy is getting more comfortable in front of an audience, becoming more confident and improving meeting after meeting. Keep it up, Madam President!

The word of the day: Jubilation, was introduced by our VPE, Chitirra.

We were honoured to have one of the senior Toastmasters, Distinguished Toastmasters, N. J. Singam to be our General Evaluator.

Advanced Communicator Bronze, CP Lau was the speaker for the invocation presentation. He reminded all, that besides the lights decoration at our houses, it is time to also light up the lights of knowledge and the lights of truth within us. It is time to reflect and admit our bad habits and wrong doings. With the arrival of the festival of lights, it is time to transform to be the  better us. He ended his speech with a quote by Mahatma Gandhi, “Be the change, to change to a better world”.

Our handsome Toastmaster of the Evening, Competent Communicator, Manish Jha, in his favourite costume, took over the control and led us through the rest of the meeting.

The ever fun and exciting table topics session was led by our charming and calm Table Topics Master, Advanced Communicator Bronze, Serena Kong. To be inducted new member, Shelly Sim took on the challenge to be the first speaker of the session. That had triggered the interest from the audience and we had 3 guests who stood on their feet and challenged the topics from Serena Kong. Well done everyone! This the platform provided and that is the attitude to take on the challenge!

Our first assigned speech speaker of the evening, Mandy Chan came on stage during the second session of the meeting. She delivered her 5^th speech from the Competent Communication manual, on body language. Her speech title was “Never Ending Voyage!”. It was her experience of her pre-wedding photography shoot in Europe. We had a Europe trip and witnessed how beautiful the couple were in their poses for the shooting. Such a romantic trip! We look forward to your wedding ceremony invitation, Mandy Chan!

Our second speaker, Yap Ooi Yee, attempted her 9^th speech from the Competent Communication manual, To persuade with power. It was convincing in her speech that, everyone is going to die one day, so let’s “Have a Meaningful Life”. What are the list of “things” we would like to do before we finally “call it a day”? Ooi Yee had persuaded and encouraged us to have a bucket list. In life, let us prioritize our plans and execute them one by one, diligently and satisfactorily and we shall have no regrets when we leave the world one day. Well said Ooi Yee!

Dato’ Dr. Mary de Silva and Srikant Marakani delivered their second speech on the Pathways education system.

Dato’ Dr. Mary de Silva’s speech titled “The Time is Now!”, had shared with us the journey of her career. It took a lot of courage for her to move out of her comfort zone. With that courage and determination, she is what she is, where she is today. She has even authored books. Fellow members, look for her for advice if you desire to do something different, something big! Seek her advice if you also have plans to author your book. She is going to be a good dictionary for all of us!

Srikant had done a research and delivered a speech on his research, “Why Is The Night Sky Dark?”. He had provided some scientific explanation on this matter and it changed our “normal” perception of why the night sky is dark. Well done Srikant and we look forward to listening to more great speeches from you!

The “talk” continued during our break time. It was in jubilation that we had so much to share and to learn from each other. Our Sergeant-At-Arms had to ring the bell several times before he could gather everyone to continue with the meeting.

We always say, “Evaluation is the breakfast for champions”. Leading us in sharing the nice and good “breakfast” in the late evening, was our beloved General Evaluator, Distinguished Toastmaster, N.J. Singam. He is one of the very sincere and honest General Evaluators that we ever had. There were lots of sharing from him as well as good tips from him in helping us to bring our club’s standard to a new height. Thank you very much Distinguished Toastmaster, N.J. Singam.

The panel of evaluators are as follow:-

1.    Ron Yeap, Advanced Communicator Bronze– Table Topics Evaluation

2.    Ken Chan, Distinguished Toastmaster – Evaluator for Mandy

3.    Tan Ben Hoe, Competent Toastmaster – Evaluator for Ooi Yee

4.    Tn. Hj. Hashim, Distinguished Toastmaster – Evaluator for Dato’ Dr. Mary

5.    CP Lau, Advanced Communicator Bronze – Evaluator for Srikant

Once again, thank you everyone who had attended this wonderful meeting! Join us on 31 Oct 2017 for a speech marathon meeting. See you soon! Vanakkam. 

Blog Writer: CP Lau

Meeting #392-Embrace the Mess

Today’s meeting was kick started by our Sergeant At Arms EK Yeo, CC, CL who called for the meeting to order at 7.15pm. He swiftly guided us through the house rules, Toastmasters’ Promise and invited me to give my presidential address. 

It’s been 3 months since I became the President of this club. In the last 3 months, I made some mistakes. But I am fortunate that with the guidance from the senior members, I managed to embrace the mess and from that, out came the theme for today’s meeting – Embrace The Mess.

After that, the Grammarian Mathew Philippose, CC, ALB introduced the word of the day which was “mettle”.

I invited the members & guests to introduce themselves to the meeting. They also recited what the theme meant to them and used the word of the day.

After a very upbeat session of passing the baton to allow each attendant to speak, I invited our Immediate Past President Ron Yeap, ACB, CL to give a Ron's-Style of humour as a Humour Master. Everyone enjoyed the session and laughed a lot.

After the humour session, the meeting was handed over to the first time Toastmaster of the Evening, Dato' Dr. Mary. Although it was her first time in this role, she came prepared and handled the situationsensibly. For the benefits of the first-time guests, she introduced the Toastmasters’ history and club's history with pride.

Then we moved on to the mysterious, mind-cracking and motivating Table Topics session with Srikant also taking the role as our Table Topics Master for the first time. He popped great questions on leadership to all those who attempted the session. Most of our guests showed the mettle to accept the challenge and the rest enjoyed their presentations.

Next, we were into another interesting part of the meeting-Assigned speech session. Our 1st speaker, Shain Anand was delivering his CC Project 3 with the title “Dealing with Suckers”. The story was about the blood sucking mosquitoes and his tips on dealing them with 4Bs -Banish, Bloom, Build and Bait. He was confident, with a calm voice and joyful facial expressions.

Our 2nd speaker was Joel, delivering CC Project 7. He started the speech entitled “Opportunity in the east" by asking questions and pulled the audience into his story. He is good in conversational style of speeches.

The 3rd speaker was Manish Jha, CC delivering Pathway Level 1, Project 2 and his speech title was “What I’ve”. Manish shared an instance from his personal life and gave a message that we should treasure what we have instead of looking forward to what we don’t have.

The final speech of the Assigned Speech Session was done by CP Lau, ACB, ALB delivering from The Advanced Communication Series, Project 4 and his speech title was“Standardize to Synchronize”.His speech was about a presentation being given in front of the Board Members of a company about upgrading their IT infrastructure. The speech had a Q&A session also.

A break of 10 full minutes was taken as we were on schedule.

Then the General Evaluator, Samuel Selvaraju, DTM took over the Evaluation session and put his team of evaluators into action.

Ben Hoe, CTM,CL was our Table Topics evaluator. As usual, he was very positive in his feedback to all the Table Topics speakers as well as supportive in sharing their areas of improvement.

After that we hadour Assigned Speech Evaluators Ken Chan DTM, KL Loh ATMG, Ron Yeap  ACB and Hj Hashim DTM, who gave such comprehensive and concise evaluations forour 4 Speakers. 

Congratulations to our winners:

Best Table Topic Speaker - Foo Fung Jiun CC 
Best Project Speech - Shain Anand 
Best Project Evaluator - Hj. Hashim DTM

Tonight’s theme taught us to embrace the mess. But in order to clear the mess, it takes courage and humility to correct the situation and to come out of the mess. That is the spirit to call for embracing the mess.

We had a total of 6 guests for our meeting tonight. Before the meeting ended, we invite our guests to provide their thoughts and feedback.

We look forward to meet everyone again in the next meeting, gracious! And of course, as usual, we had our group photo before the end of the meeting. Say cheese!

Blog writer: Wendy Sim CC

Meeting # 391 – Unleash the Power Within

Hello.

The upcoming Leadership workshop at MMKL was soon to come and thus it stirred us to have a meeting that would be a catalyst to our attendants to sign up for it. Unleash the Power Within was the theme of the meeting inspired by non-other than the world’s number one motivational coach, Anthony Robbins. 

Our Sergeant At Arms was E K Yeo, CC, CL who called for the meeting to order at 7.15pm promptly as always. He swiftly guided us through the house rules, Toastmasters’ Promise and invited the President on to give her presidential address. 

Wendy was in sync with the theme both mentally and physically with her well prepped opening address highlighting leadership. She then invited the Grammarian to introduce the word of the day which was “endeavour”. To endeavour is to strive at accomplishing a goal. To be constantly hopeful in times of discomfort. To most definitely unleash the power within. And with that, every member and guest shared their thoughts and hopes in what inspires them to climb the ladder of success in leadership and how they had grown as individuals by unleashing their truest potentials. 

After a very upbeat session of passing the baton to allow each attendant to speak, we were all ears for an invocation speak by one of MMKL’s experienced Toastmaster. K L Loh, ATMG, delivered his heart felt invocation speech based on the theme. 

Our Toastmaster of the Evening, Kevin Khoo, CC took stage in his usual charismatic manner. He engaged the guests by introducing the history of Toastmasters and later moved on to introduce the respective role players who were ready to develop their leadership skills in Toastmasters. 

Shain Anand was the Ah-Counter, Foo Fung Jiun, CC took the Grammarian role and EK Yeo, CC, CL played double roles today by also being the Timer. The key guest for the day, the General Evaluator, was Vincent Hoy, CC, ALB. 

We then moved on to the mysterious, mind-cracking and motivating Table Topics session with the humble and elegant Serena Kong, ACB as our Table Topics Master. She popped great questions on leadership to all those who attempted at the session. Mostly all of our guests rose to the challenge to unleash the power within them to speak. 

Main course was served at 8.00pm with a variety of speeches by 3 speakers for the Assigned Project Session. Today we had with us two Pathways Ice Breaker speeches and one speech from the Competent Communication manual.

The first ice breaker was by our new member Mary de Silva with her title The Human Dynamo. She was all out to deliver her very first speech and she did it with so much poise, passion and power. Way advanced for an ice breaker, Mary used props and slides to deliver her speech and shared with us many jaw dropping facts about herself. 

The second ice breaker speech was by Manish Jha, CC. Although already a Competent Communicator he revisited his ice breaker in the Pathways module and shared with us about a life changing mistake in his life. His title was MJ, The Untold Story and the story was about how he was accidentally placed 2nd in class in the 9th grade of school when he was actually 2nd last but that mistake made him unleash the potential in him to really make it to the 2nd place to maintain the mistaken title but this time for real in his next grade. Truly encouraging that where there is a will, there is a way and that anything is possible. 

Alas, the final speaker who delivered the 7th speech in the Competent Communication Manual was a not-so competent speaker. Rather, he was an extremely advanced speaker. Ken Chan, DTM left the crowd with food for thought with his speech Now Everyone Can Lead. With his charismatic gestures and manner, he brought us through his speech on the types of leadership style one could adapt and also managed to smoothly slot in a slight preview of the Leadership Workshop that MMKL was to organize at the end of the month. 

After a fulfilling session with speeches that were music to the ears and fuel to the mind, there was a short Pathways Briefing session by Dr. William Lau, DTM who is one of District 102’s Pathways Ambassador. He led us through a step by step guide on how we could log on to proceed with our Pathways Curriculum and indeed it was a helpful session for all the members to kick-start their Pathways. 

A short break was given to continue to feast the mouth-watering Nasi Lemak we have at MMKL and then we continued for a greater feast which was the breakfast of Toastmasters. The evaluations session was conducted by Vincent Hoy, CC, ALB who is also a Pathway Ambassador. First up was the Table Topics evaluation by Kelvin Chong, ACB. He gave his sincere heart-felt opinion. Then the panel of project speech evaluators gave their full and honest opinions on the respective speakers. KL Loh, ATMG went full on to give a thorough evaluation for Mary. Hj. Hashim, DTM went on with his story telling evaluation for Manish’s speech and Ken Chan, DTM had the privilege to be evaluated by Dr. William Lau, DTM himself. 

A brief open evaluation was given for the project speeches and the respective role players gave their reports on the speech crutches, grammar and time. Vincent, CC, ALB gave his sincere criticism and feedback that was truly a fruitful advice for the club. Indeed the biggest room in the world is the room for improvement.  

It was close to 9.40pm and it was time for our President to announce the winners for the night and deliver her closing address. The best Table Topics was bagged by non-other than Ken Chan, DTM for his flamboyant delivery. Unfortunately due to time disqualifications no voting was done for the best evaluator and best project speaker.

Wendy Sim, CC the President then gave her best speech and reiterated about the capabilities we all have hidden inside us. Many of the guests shared how they truly enjoyed the meeting and we even had a couple ready to sign up, eager to unleash the power within them. With that, the meeting adjourned and a cheerful group photo was taken. 

It’s always a rewarding meeting at MMKL and each meeting sure allows us to unleash our power within and with that in mind dear reader I hope you find in yourself something for you to unleash.

Blog writer: Chitirra

Meeting #390- Going Places !!

Meeting Number 390 was held on 12^th Sept 2017.   The club meeting is called to order by Competent Toastmaster, Competent leader (CTM CL) Tan Ben Hoe.  As usual after introducing the House Rules, he led the club members to recite the Toastmasters’ promise.  The promises are printed on the club agenda. He then handed the meeting over to the President Wendy Sim. She welcomed the members and guests to the meeting.  In her opening address she signified the Theme of the Day which is “Going Places”. She then calls upon the Grammarian for the Day, Advanced Communicator Bronze (ACB) Serena Kong to introduce the Word of the Day. The word we learnt on this day is “Wanderlust”.  President Wendy then turns to the audience seated in a U-shaped format to start introducing themselves. I should say everyone, including the guests, attempted to say something on the theme of the day and word of the day. The President gave a strong opening to the theme and invited the Toastmaster of the Evening Evening (TME) Competent Communicator Foo Fung Jiun to take control of the meeting.

The TME introduced the role-players of the meeting to introduce the purpose of their roles. So we had the Grammarian Serena Kong, Ah-Counter E.K Yeo and Timer Wendy Sim and the GE Jerry Wong to introduce their roles for the meeting that evening.  These roles will add much meaning at the end of the day adding to the progress of the club.  The TME now invites again our senior member Advanced Toastmaster Gold KL Loh who presents an innovation speech and uplifts the spirit of all seated.  One of the key functions of the TME is helping to run through the agenda of the day. He called upon the Table Topics™ Master EK Yeo, CC, CL for a fun filled session.

 

In this session we had both members and guests giving a try to do impromptu speeches within the time allocated. We had a good group of eager participants for this session.  The first speaker Ron Yeap, CC spoke on the topic “If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door”. He was followed by Manish Jha,CCwho spoke on the topic, “Life is short, lets enjoy it”.Our 3^rd speaker Jia Ming, also a guest, spoke on the topic “Future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams”.The 4^th speaker Olivia, also a guest, spoke on the topic “There are no short cuts to any place worth going”. And the final speaker Mathew spoke on the topic“If you have a dream what you want to be?”  As the impromptu speeches ended a vote was taken for the Best Table Topics™ Speaker.

As the TME took control again of the meeting again. He led the club to witness the Assigned Speech Sessions.   We have 2 groups of speeches, one was from the pathway guide and the second was from the Competent Communication Manual.  The speaker from the prepared speeches was Srikant who gave an Ice Breaker speech with the speech title, A lifelong learner.  He spoke very fluently, although it is his first speech and the eloquence of the English language helped us to understand how his life was a lifelong learning experience. Our 2^nd speaker was Chitirra who also gave an ice breaker speech with speech title Passion is Purpose. She actually burned with much passion throughout her speech. This was followed by our 3^rd speaker, Joel Silas, from the CC manual on the topic Vocal Variety with the speech title Travelling with Excitement. In this speech , Joel spoke very different from his previous speeches. He spoke confidently, with humor and excitement. Our final speaker was Yap Ooi Yee who gave her 8^th speech from the CC manual.  The title of the speech was “Roller Coaster Interviews”.  All the speeches was very inspiring and rewarding listening to them. TME took a vote for the best speaker and adjourned the meeting for a break.

During the break, there was much food like the favourite “Nasi Lemak”, fried eggs, fried chicken, curry puffs, cakes and bananas. As the break ended the SAA called the meeting to order and passed it over to the TME. The TME invited the GE Jerry to preside over the meeting.  Yes, Jerry with a cheerful face invited the evaluators to give their evaluations. The first evaluator was Tan Ben Hoe CC, CL who gave evaluation on the table topics session. He gave a vivid finding on each speaker and with encouraging notes for improvement.  This was followed by speech evaluators KL Loh ATMG, Manish Jha, CC Ron Yeap ACB and Mathew Philippose , CC, ALB.  Each evaluator gave clear evaluations that not only helped speakers but the listeners to improve.  As the evaluation ended there was vote for the Best Evaluator.  

The next session is what we are also keen to know how we performed on the day.  The Ah Counter, Grammarian and Timer gave their reports.  This was followed by the GE’s report who summed up the meeting with a good analysis of the meeting and encouraging us in the direction of the club.  

GE Jerry wong passed the control back to the TME who then invited President Wendy to give away the prizes for the best performers for the day. The best table topics speaker went to Manish Jha.He was overjoyed to receive this award. Our best evaluator went to KL Loh ATMG.He took the award beaming with smile. The Best speaker was almost everybody’s guess, it was Chitirra. 

After the giving away the awards President Wendy gave a token of appreciation to the General Evaluator.  She then closed the meeting with her closing address. The club then took a group photo and had a cake cutting for those whose birthdays fell in September.  It was a great and satisfying meeting.

See you all again on 26th. September.

Blog writer: Mathew Philippose.

Meeting #389 Merdeka: United We Stand

Month of August means very differently to Malaysians. 60 years ago, this country, which was then called Malaya, gained her independence from the British’s colonialism.

Time lapsed to 60 years later, zoomed in to a small club called Money Mastery-KL Toastmasters Club, taking the opportunity to celebrate the National Day, by calling the meeting with the theme: Merdeka: United We Stand. Members were asked to dress in colourful outfits that showed the multi-cultural environment of our country.

It was 29^th August 2017, 2 days before the National Day break was about to start, we had our 3^rd meeting of the month, which fell on the 5^th week of the Month.

The weather did not show any sign of cooperation, as it turned cloudy and dark at 6.30pm. That didn’t stop dedicated members like Joel, Chitirra to arrive early at the meeting venue at for early preparation.

As time got closer, more and more members and guests turned and finally by 7.15pm, the meeting was ready to start. Our Assistant SAA, Srikant, called the meeting to order. He greeted everyone, and stated the rule of the meeting clearly to the attendees. Next, he led the members to recite the Toastmasters promises.

As soon as the solemn drill was over, President Wendy Sim, CC was invited to the stage for her President’s Address. She recalled her childhood memory of watching National Day fireworks and enjoyed shopping spree with her family.

Members and guests were asked to introduced themselves to the meeting. They also recited what the theme meant to them and used the word of the day, “liberated”.

When the self-introduction session was over, the meeting was handed over to the first-time Toastmaster of the Evening, Shain Anand. Shain, although was first time in his role, he came prepared and handed the situations swiftly. To the benefits of the first-time guest, he introduced Toastmasters history and club history with pride.

Another interesting session was due to begin when Shain called upon the Table Topics^TM Master, Mary de Silva to lead the session. Mary challenged the members and guests on the topics she prepared that were related to the theme of the meeting. 4 courageous participants attempted the topics. Started by Srikant, the flow continued with 3 other guests Olivia, Stanley and Crystal.

The meeting entered another session for the prepared speeches. The first speaker of the day was Chong Ji Sheng, advancing to Competent Communicator speech no. 8, that was “Get Comfortable with Visual Aids”. Ji Sheng shared his story with title “My Basketball Life”. He told us his rise and fall in the involvement of basketball, with photos of the past and demo-ed a little skill with a basketball.

Ken Chan, DTM, the 2^nd speaker, was also delivering from the Competent Communication manual. Ken was delivering Project Speech no. 10 - Inspire Your Audience. Ken’s title was “Now Everyone Can…Humour!”. Ken shared with us how he turned himself from homor-proof to a humorist. The trophies that he won from numerous Humorous Speech contests were the solid proof that he had made it.

Moving on to the Advanced Communication Speech, Victor Wan, ACS, ALB kick-started with the speech from Public Relations manual, which he was attempting the Project Speech No. 1 - The Good Will Speech. Victor brought to us his speech titled “The Club of your Life”. His speech was motivating. He complemented the members and guests who were attending the Toastmasters meeting over other priorities were those who are eager and persistent for their personal development.

CP Lau, ACB, ALB was the last speaker of the day, speaking from speech Manual – Speaking to Inform. He delivered the speech titled “E.R.P.” from Project No. 3 “The Demonstration Talk”. Through this software demonstration, we felt the relevance to upgrade our legacy system to improve “efficiency, resource, and productivity” of our workplace.

A 10 mins break were all we had to rejuvenate ourselves for the next session. Coming back from the break, Toastmaster of the Evening invited Mr. General Evaluator, Lim Thian Seng, DTM to take over the Evaluation Session.

The first evaluation speech came from Ron Yeap, ACB who were evaluating the Table Topics^TM session. The 4 participants, albeit their relatively new experience with Table Topics ^TM session, attempted the topics well. Ron suggested them to be more natural with their body language and assure them that they would benefit more if they come again to the club meeting.

The assigned speech evaluation, started off by Kang Fong Luan, CC, the president of My Puchong TMC, to Ji Sheng. Kang suggested Ji Sheng to get familiarized with his visual aids prior to presentation. Mathew Philippose, CC, ALB reviewed Ken Chan’s performance with more stringent criteria for his improvement, as Ken is a senior speaker in Toastmasters. Serena Kong, ACB who evaluated Victor Wan, complemented him for selecting the right venue (Toastmaster’s Meeting) for his speech. As of Ken, this time as an evaluator to CP Lau, offered different perspective that CP could consider in his presentation.

Thian Seng, our General Evaluator, felt good with our club’s setup, including the banner at the downstairs which he found very important and useful to locate our venue. He encouraged us to uphold the standard of our club for future to come.

The meeting had seen the speakers and role players put in their best effort, and announcement of the best performers of the meeting was a breath-holding moment for us.

• Best Table Topics^TM Speaker: Stanley (Guest)
• Best Project Speech: Ken Chan, DTM
• Best Speech Evaluator: Kang Fong Luan, CC

After Madam President took over the stage, she thanked everyone who attended the meeting and enhanced the meeting with colourful outfits, and wished us a peaceful and prosperous weekend ahead of us.

Meeting ended closer to 10pm, but everyone went back with a smile on their face, waiting to enjoy their long weekend.

Blog writer: Ron Yeap, ACB